Social Media Revolutions

The choice of the Egyptian government to shut down the entire internet is no small thing. Certainly there were social ramifications, but news reports don't lend the proper weight to how absolutely revolutionary this event is. Egypt is not some third-world, we-just-got-on-the-net kind of a country. They are on par technologically, and in many ways more advanced than most of the Western world. Egypt is also an important hinge point for international business, as most of the business coming in from the African continent and Middle East to the Far East and the EU, comes through Egypt. This being the case, the shutting down of cybernetic capabilities has heavy economic implications as well.

Why would the Egyptian government risk the detrimental economic implications just because a few radicals were posting stuff on social media websites? Because the population rallied around the idea, they came together collectively; and used the social media outlets as tools to initiate a massive change. What change will occur? We are in the process of watching that drama unfold, but this event speaks highly to the power we have as individuals through organizing, communication and communion to radically transform the planet that we are rapidly destroying.

Deep down to the core of our being, the human organism knows that we are in the process of a deep evolution. The realization of our over-consumption in the Western world on a large scale could represent the cusp of a massive transformation in how we interact as relational beings to one another and to the planet that we inhabit. Westerners do realize this problem, but they are left with the conceptions and weight of what may be at stake, rolling around in the outer-layers of subconscious experience. Hence, gut feelings and intuitive urges get dismissed as nerves or passing anxiety because we are repeatedly told that these modes of experience are separate and unrelated to normative, everyday experience. 

This represents the sleeping potion that is doled out to our population en masse via distractionary media--cognitive dissonance on a very large scale. Social media in many ways has served as one of the big sleepers that is preventing a massive awakening in consciousness globally. Egypt, and the preceding situations in Tunisia and Kenya, demonstrates that social media can be used to spark awakening when given the proper handling. The power we wield as individuals if we band together as a community can topple even the most corrupt system. It is through communion, understanding and conversation that such progress is sparked.